Volodymyr Kozhukhar is a titular conductor whose name is familiar to each lover of musical art, especially opera, ballet, and symphonic music. He is one of the few Ukrainian conductors known in the cultural space of Europe, as well as in America, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, and Canada, where he performed on numerous occasions, directing opera and ballet performances, symphonic programs, and representing not only his own talent, but also Ukraine’s musical culture, which is actively becoming integrated into the global artistic process primarily thanks to his international performances.
Last week at the National Opera of Ukraine was marked by a celebration of the 65th anniversary of the theater’s chief conductor, People’s Artiste of Ukraine and Russia Volodymyr Kozhukhar. It proved a feast for the theatergoing public, who attended three performances directed by the maestro. Volodymyr Kozhukhar’s jubilee performances featured popular plays of the National Opera: operas Faust by Charles Gounod and Aida by Giuseppe Verdi and the ballet Raymonda by Aleksandr Glazunov. They represent only a small fraction of the conductor’s present repertoire. He directs over 50 operas and ballets currently staged at the theater. Yet this is merely a hundredth of what he has directed during the 45 years of his creative service to the muse of music. Even though they say that statistics are no indicator in a sphere as delicate as art, sometimes they are very telltale. According to modest estimates of music expert Halyna Konkova, since he first stood at the conductor’s stand as a conservatory student Volodymyr Kozhukhar has prepared and directed over 200 major symphonic and symphonic-vocal works, while the number of concerts he has given is larger by several orders of magnitude. He produced the first renditions of a large number of works by Ukrainian composers: both classics and his contemporaries. In doing so, he continued the wonderful tradition of Natan Rakhlin and Stefan Turchak: from Lysenko, Revutsky, Liatoshynsky, Kyreiko, and Kanerstein to Hrabovsky, Bibik, Stankovych, and Dychko. His peers still recall with piety their creative communication with the young conductor, who even at the start of his career had a mature creative concept, which is something many contemporary conductors are unable to achieve even in ripe old age. This concept was reflected in his striving to primarily convey the author’s genuine idea and musical score, and not produce some special rendition of a certain symphony or chamber work.
To all appearances, Volodymyr Kozhukhar’s creative biography is quite balanced and progressive. His professional level has always been high and was never questioned even by those with diametrically opposed aesthetic principles. As one of his first independent creative steps he received the right to select his own repertoire and stage operatic productions, which eventually became his creative constant. He has been understood and even loved by singers and operatic and ballet performers, which does not happen too often among conductors. Although Ukrainian critics do not write about Volodymyr Kozhukhar too often, they invariably do so with good will, pointing out the high merits of the musical part of his every musical production. Foreign critics also note a special bond between the conductor and musicians along with Kozhukhar’s inspiration and ability to imbue performers with his own energy. However, this is only a background to the maestro’s creative palette. Many aspects of his creative work remain on the margins, because the end result — a performance or concert program — is the result of an internal search and efforts to create harmony, and the conductor’s ability to become engrossed in the material long before rehearsals, overcome doubts, and resolve problems independently. The wonderful direction schools of Mykhailo Kanerstein and Ihor Markevych, which young Kozhukhar managed to harmonize with his own creative practice, have shaped not only his pronounced, dynamic, and extremely accurate manual technique, but also such traits as his profound perception of the style of music and its dramatic essence, and ability to balance the future performance in his mind long before the first rehearsals. This is why orchestra performers, singers, and the choir easily follow the creative flow of rehearsals directed by Kozhukhar. During rehearsals Volodymyr Kozhukhar only polishes off the material, fine-tuning the balance of orchestra groups, and integrating vocal parts into the background of the performance to perfect it to an ultimate artistic condition. Proof of this are such wonderful productions staged under Volodymyr Kozhukhar’s direction as Liatoshynsky’s Zakhar Berkut, Tchaikovsky’s Mazepa, Wagner’s Loengrin, Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges, Puccini’s Gioconda, Verdi’s Turandot, Nabucco, Aida, Requiem, and Shostakovich’s Katerina Izmaylova. Thanks to Kozhukhar, the theater’s bill added a ballet triptych by Ihor Stravinsky and choreographic masterpieces by Anatoliy Shekera based on Hector Berlioz’s Symphony Fantastic.
For over 15 years now Volodymyr Kozhukhar has been the chief conductor of the National Opera of Ukraine. In 1989 he returned from Moscow to his native theater and Kyiv — the city of his youth. Apart from continuing the best traditions of the country’s leading musical company, he has been developing them fruitfully. It is worth noting that Kozhukhar returned to the Kyiv Opera when it was in especially dire straits. The country’s financial crisis dealt a heavy blow to art. Only truly creative work could save the unique opera and ballet troupe from degradation and a drain of bright artistic personalities, many of whom were invited to perform at foreign opera theaters. The theater faced two options: either limit itself to performing exclusively the existing repertoire or to produce several new, bright renditions that would inspire the troupe with hope and expand the repertoire of guest performances, which would enable the theater to weather the temporary hardships.
As the chief conductor responsible for the theater’s creative condition, Volodymyr Kozhukhar opted for the second, much more complex path, which eventually proved more promising. Soon followed a succession of foreign tours, in between which the theater was able to replenish the repertoire with new productions that were in demand with both Ukrainian and foreign audiences. A very important thing happened. Faced with the hardships of the Ukrainian reality, our musical culture started to actively integrate into European and world cultures. Credit for this goes to Volodymyr Kozhukhar, whose level of conductor’s mastery, and hence the artistic level of operatic and ballet performances of the Kyiv opera, generate interest among foreign audiences.
In the last 16 years Volodymyr Kozhukhar staged over 30 plays in the Kyiv Opera, which form the basis of the theater’s current repertoire. Behind these names is intense creative work, searches, intensive and often exhausting rehearsals in which the inimitable miracle of a theatrical performance is born.
The jubilee program, proposed by the maestro himself, was largely geared to represent not so much his own creativity, as the creative palette of the operatic and ballet troupe, symphony orchestra, and choir that work together with Volodymyr Kozhukhar to further glorify the National Opera of Ukraine, one of the world’s best theaters.
